Overview: Content Creation & Marketing

led prospects through the following five elements, in precisely this order: #1. Name a Big, Relevant Change in the World... the undeniable shift in the world that creates both (a) big stakes and (b) huge urgency for your prospect.... most pitch advice ... is to start with “the problem.” When you assert that your prospects have a problem, you put …

Traditional blogs might have swung out of favor, as we all discovered the benefits of social media and aggregating platforms, but we think they’re about to swing back in style, as we all discover the real costs and problems brought by such centralization... With the new take, we’re also trying to bring more of a classic SvN style back to the site.…

In the case of vaccines, the fact that scientists and doctors are not producing a steady stream of new digital content about settled science has left a void for conspiracy theorists and fraudsters to fill ... Data voids may be relatively easy to diagnose, but they are very difficult to fix... cannot be achieved by removing problematic content... W…

Rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail, I’ve decided to publish exactly what they sent me, despite the personal cost and embarrassment they threaten.

In all the urgent debate about regulating, investigating, and even breaking up internet companies, we have lost sight of the problem we are trying to confront: not technology but instead human behaviour on it... in their search for someone to blame, government outsource fault and responsibility, egged on by media (whose schadenfreude constitutes …

Bezos and his team ... removed PowerPoint ... Instead, they distribute six-page narrative-based memos, that all attendees read in silence at the start of each meeting... "Reports should be distributed, presentations should be presented." ... if a report primarily conveys information, then stories produce an experience... facts and stories can be …

On one hand, consumers have short attention spans, and on the other, studies have shown that longer video can perform better... first consider the goal of the campaign.... Determining performance on marketing-based goals can be a bit complicated to pin down... If site perusal is your goal, short video is best... Why produce a long video when you…

the Oxford Circus panic ... was amplified by social media.... Fear can be transmitted digitally as easily as it can physically—and that’s a problem because digital technologies reach everyone.... the English-speaking world is in the middle of a fear pandemic... Cognitive biases leave us ill-equipped ... Amygdala hijacks and warped media business m…

Latest on the K4P Medium Publication

political scientist Lilliana Mason ... new book, Uncivil Agreement ... we actually agree about most things... “our conflicts are over who we think we are, rather than reasoned differences of opinion... Our opinions can be very fluid... if we wanted to come to a compromise we could, if there were not these pesky identities in the way... we disagree…

A rallying cry creates the emotional shorthand that sticks in our heads and builds strong positive associations. Those are powerful elements that help a brand rise above competitors and help turn customers into advocates. Think about doing that for our organizations. That’s important work. Too important for a mere tagline. It’s time for a rallying…

the next iteration of technology applied to politics will be a huge leap forward with a greater ability to target people... address each of the 156 million of registered voters on the US with personalized messages.... a falsehood delivered in a personalized way is likely to be more efficient but less visible than a blatant lie put on Twitter; it w…

A fairly simple, free routine that’s enabled me to market myself on LinkedIn with surprisingly good results. It worked for me, it might work for you.

Newport defines Deep Work as “Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.”... in an average office setting such a state of prolonged “distraction-free concentration” is all but impo…

“So I and fellow Australian-in-Brussels Richard Medic decided to ask some friends to help answer a couple of questions: How can the EU support its superheroes, without destroying their credibility in the process? And under what conditions should it even try?”

To #DeleteFacebook is to throw the baby out with the bathwater without solving the underlying problem.This is not another post on the benefits or evils of Facebook — you can figure that out for yourself…- my latest post accepted into The Mission

To counter disinformation and revalue quality journalism we need a competitive ecosystem of credibility indexes to stimulate innovation and avoid a Ministry of Truth, de facto or otherwise.- more on Medium

Technology is hijacking our minds and society.... we are advancing thoughtful solutions to change the system... Try these simple changes to live more intentionally with your devices.

When in doubt, blame the robots. Facebook ... has proposed a familiar solution: f the algorithm has failed, let’s just build a better algorithm.... the focus on the software misses the point ... the Internet has failed as a public forum.... Perhaps we wouldn’t still be defending this failed experiment if it wasn’t so stunningly profitable... highl…

these technologies ... kind of a denial-of-service (DoS) attack on the human will. Our phones are the operating system for our life. They keep us looking and clicking... wears down certain capacities, like willpower... repeated distractions lower people’s effective IQ by up to 10 points... over twice ... that ... from long-term marijuana usage....…

Decades of studies have demonstrated a positive correlation between writing (particularly journaling) and health.... lower blood pressure, improved immune function, and fewer visits to the doctor... better relationships, improved memory, and more success at work... therapists often use journaling to get their patients to better understand how part…

uses the social network to promote her business... set up various safeguards to avoid becoming too emotionally invested ... a web browser plug-in ... replaces the social network’s endless stream ... with a single inspiring quote.... hired a social media manager ... because she could no longer stand the addictive feedback loop ... She had been a …

undoing radicalization is not as simple as filling people’s heads with “accurate” facts. A radicalized person will not — cannot — accept them... you need to first make the radicalized person... capable of not feeling threatened, unsafe, and wounded ... It’s very, very hard. It takes social bonds to be restored somehow — oft through therapy, educat…

Facebook and Twitter... algorithms ... are off limits ... almost impossible to monitor... make millions of what amount to editorial decisions, pumping out content without anyone fully understanding what is happening... opaque and slow to be discovered... government should require social media platforms ... open application programming interface.…

the capacity to spread ideas ... no longer limited by access to expensive... infrastructure. It’s limited instead by one’s ability to garner and distribute attention. And right now, the flow of the world’s attention is structured... by just a few digital platforms:... tincreasingly stand in for the public sphere itself... at their core... They’re …

What if “persuadability” isn’t the right metric to look at? ... Information warfare expert Molly McKew, who specializes in U.S.–Russia relations... "There aren’t good tools to evaluate the impact of shadow campaigns... Information and psychological operations ... are not just about information, but about changing behavior... of more than 36,000 …

the response from the platforms is the equivalent of politicians’ “hopes and prayers” after a school shooting... irrefutable proof that these actors are leveraging social media ... to force divisive and often false narratives into our public discourse... Twitter, Facebook, and Google have not taken a more ambitious approach to stopping abuse of…

Which did the ad industry choose?... It tried to ignore technology and automation... when that didn’t work, it bought the machines.... It didn’t invest in research, development, innovation... develop new services, new ways, new formats, new ideas, whole new ways of helping institutions and people relate, connect, and bond... So the broken relatio…

it just felt like the conversations that we were having subsequently were actually pretty shallow and actually pretty useless, because we were talking over each other because everybody meant different things... we can only really start talking about interventions if we understand what we’re talking about... I say, “Please don’t use the term.” “Yea…

Fake News is suddenly on the boil in the Brussels Bubble. Here are some ideas I brainstormed earlier this week. Comments welcome.